Yale Law School graduate found allies in tech billionaires including Peter Thiel
who rallied privately for him
When JD Vance was a student at Yale Law School in 2011, he attended a talk
featuring Peter Thiel, the conservative tech billionaire. Although Vance didn’t
know Thiel at the time, over the next decade he would become Thiel’s employee,
friend and the recipient of his largesse. Thiel’s millions paved the way for
Vance to become a senator.
Thiel’s talk was “the most significant moment of my time at Yale Law School”,
Vance would write in a 2020 essay for The Lamp, a Catholic magazine. In Vance’s
telling, Thiel’s talk of the failures of elite institutions and belief in
Christianity made him reconsider his own faith and immediately make plans for a
career outside of law – one that wound through the worlds of tech and venture
capital before politics.
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